The buck stops with me, Obama pledges

By Scott Wilson

January 9, 2010 — 12.00am

WASHINGTON: In a short, stern address, the US President, Barack Obama, has sought to assure Americans that he is moving swiftly to correct the intelligence failures that allowed a man to allegedly carry explosives on board a plane on Christmas Day.

But Mr Obama also warned that threats posed by ''a nimble adversary'' would require more time and money to eliminate.

In his address on Thursday, he used the word ''immediate'' six times in a 12-minute speech - at one point twice in the same sentence - to convey a sense of urgency that critics say he lacked in the days after the attempted bombing.

He also spoke sharply for the second time in as many days about the ''systemic failures'' that allowed a 23-year-old Nigerian, whose father had warned US authorities about his son's radical interpretation of Islam, to board a Detroit-bound airliner in Amsterdam, allegedly with explosives under his clothes.

Mr Obama said he was less interested in ''passing out blame'' than in correcting mistakes, and he made clear that senior intelligence officials would be overseeing the reforms rather than looking for new jobs.

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But Mr Obama, more than in his previous remarks about the incident, also held himself accountable as commander-in-chief of the nation for the near catastrophe that unfolded during his Christmas vacation, saying: ''Ultimately, the buck stops with me.''

He released a unclassified report into the security lapses leading up to the incident and outlined a set of technical reforms designed to better track suspected terrorists and enhance airline security.

The remedies are mostly modest steps. And the report concluded that another round of sweeping intelligence reorganisation ''is not required''.

But this preamble soon gave way to a stark reminder that ''we are at war''.

''Here at home, we will strengthen our defences, but we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans,'' Mr Obama said.

''Because great and proud nations don't hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. That is exactly what our adversaries want.''

Mr Obama has struggled to strike the right tone about the failed attack, initially waiting three days to address the incident publicly.

His advisers said the delay was in part designed to deprive al-Qaeda of the public relations benefit that would come with an alarmed presidential reaction. But his critics, most of them from the political opposition, called it a sign that Mr Obama is not sufficiently engaged in the fight against al-Qaeda.

Since then, Mr Obama has ratcheted up his public concern about the incident.

This week, the White House released photos of the meeting Mr Obama held with his security team. The image was designed to send the signal that the President had mobilised the national security apparatus against the threat.

As he works to convince the public that reparations are under way to the intelligence analysis procedures, Mr Obama acknowledged on Thursday that ''even the best intelligence can't identify in advance every individual who would do us harm''.

''There is no silver bullet to securing the thousands of flights into America each day,'' he said.

The remarks were a real-world nod to the security risks posed by low-tech terrorism and the political peril such incidents present to his presidency.

''He has to do everything possible to show that he is as humanly in command of the situation as possible,'' said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution. ''In other words, you work as hard as you can to make the system as good as you can and yet one foul-up has the sort of power to trump everything else.''

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Mr Obama spoke to his political rivals who see the airline incident as a sign of his weakness: ''Now is not a time for partisanship, it's a time for citizenship. That's what it means to be strong in the face of violent extremism.''